


Last Night

by butterflymind



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: A Wilde Week 2020 (Rusty Quill Gaming), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:01:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27660394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterflymind/pseuds/butterflymind
Summary: Just before they leave London Oscar gives his final, exclusive, performance.
Relationships: Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33
Collections: A Wilde Week 2020





	Last Night

**Author's Note:**

> For A Wilde Week 2020, on the day 1 theme of 'revenge'. Yes, I realise I am very late. This stands alone, but if you have read the five nights series, it fits between first nights and winter nights.

_"Good evening to you all."_

This was, Zolf thought with grim resignation, the worst idea anyone had ever had. It was certainly the worst idea he had ever tacitly enabled. 

"Is there a reason you're letting this happen?" Cel asked from behind him. They had met Cel while travelling through London, and then this whole thing had blown up and Zolf had decided that both moral and technical support could be no bad thing. Particularly if they needed to make a quick getaway. 

"Catharsis." Zolf replied, his eyes fixed on the figure on the stage. 

"He could have gone to therapy maybe?" for the first time Zolf broke his gaze from the figure on the stage to give Cel an incredulous look.

"And how do you think that suggestion would have gone down?" Cel shrugged.

"It would have been worth a try." 

"I did try, and it wasn't." 

"Was he fine?" 

"He was, inevitably and completely obstinately, fine." 

"Well, some things never change." Cel shot him a brilliant grin in the darkness of the wings. 

"No, they never do." Zolf's hand twitched for his glaive. No matter that Oscar had insisted this was not an occasion for violence.

_"And now, if you would be so kind."_

It took them both a startled second to realise the man on stage was gesturing towards the wing. Zolf hurriedly brought the chair he was holding out to Oscar, lowering his head as he returned to avoid the gaze of the audience. Cel, in their turn, dimmed the lights with only the tiniest of fizzes and one stray spark from the lighting desk.

"Definitely improved." Cal nodded with satisfaction. The lights had neither fizzed nor sparked before Cel got their hands on the control desk this afternoon, but on the other hand it had also not had the ability to teach complex chasing sequences to the elementals who powered the lights.

_"I think perhaps there is a more suitable reading for this evening, than the one originally planned."_

'Here we go.' Thought Zolf, preparing himself to defend the honour of the idiot on stage if he had to. Leaning around the wing curtain he could just see the audience. What was left of the great and the good of London, those who had somehow held on to their wealth when everyone was starving and dying, were leaning forward in their chairs. Mixed in with them were the profiteers who'd risen up the social scale during the war like scum on a pond. An Oscar Wilde reading was still enough social cachet to bring them, and something better than the play reading they thought they had come for was enough to send a frisson through the room. Oscar pulled from his suit jacket a thick volume, once a normal notebook but now overstuffed with the ephemera of travel. Zolf was intimately familiar with that book, and it made him smile to see it. Beside him he felt Cel shift on their feet.

"He's really going to do it then?"

"Never doubted it for an instant." Zolf sniffed "Awkward sod."

“I thought these were his sort of people.”

“They were.” Zolf emphasised the last word, “At least he liked playing the part with them. And he considered some of them really his friends. I think that may be the biggest problem.”

 _"Perhaps a reading from my diary."_ Oscar gave the book a theatrical flourish, pretending to isolate an entry rather than find the papers he knew perfectly well were tucked inside. Zolf watched with poorly disguised amusement. 

_"To begin with then."_ Oscar said, offering a mock bow to the front row. _"Lady Chessington..."_

And slowly, deliberately, and with very great relish, he began to spill their secrets. Every piece of gossip he'd picked up in London circles, every whisper he'd heard lounging in continental cafés on the meritocrats dime. Every report that had passed across his desk and every one he had written, starting in the front row and moving methodically through the audience. He'd arranged the guest list and seating himself, all the better to pitch neighbour against neighbour. Zolf could see them, turning to each other with scowls and snarls. He could also feel Cel at his back, watching too, their smile brilliant in the darkness.

"It's quite fun to watch, isn't it?” they observed, switching from spotlight to spotlight as Oscar extracted himself from his audience and retook the stage. By now he had trouble being heard over the rapidly boiling crowd, but he sang a snatch of song and his voice rose, clear and ringing over the noise of the audience.

"And may it be a lesson to you." Oscar said with a bitter smile and glint in his eye. "That you should listen to those who know, despite them being of a different class to you. And perhaps you shouldn't decide you know better than some playwright when he tells you to flee. And perhaps-" His voice drew down over the crowd like a net, and their attention momentarily shifted back to him. "And perhaps, if you want to stay and the servants want to run, you shouldn't endanger someone else's life for your convenience." Full flow now, some in serious, measured, tonnes even as they squabbled between themselves. 

"How long are you going to let this go on?" Cel asked. They were checking their watch, which gave off an unearthly glow every time they uncovered it. 

"How long do we have?" Zolf was making his own calculations, estimating when the crowd would realise their major problem was not each other, but the man on the stage.

"We need to leave in the next ten minutes. James says we need to sail with the tide." 

Zolf nodded, took a deep breath, and stepped out onto the stage. Oscar was of course on the far side by now, still working his way along the rows of people he had personally invited to this 'exclusive reading with Oscar Wilde' . Zolf had to cross the entire stage to reach him, trying to both ignore and keep a surreptitious eye on the audience as he did so. Oscar was in full flow, excoriating a duchess for her hypocritical improprieties with the husband of a close friend, while she preached fidelity and encouraged punishment for anyone who didn’t meet her moral standards. He tapped Oscar on the arm. 

"We need to go." The was no response. Considering his options to gain Oscar's attention in the rapidly increasing noise of the room, Zolf stood on his foot. 

"Ow!" Oscar finally looked at him. 

"We need to go." He repeated. 

"Just a few more?" Oscar asked, his voice plaintive like a child. 

"No time. Come on." 

"Just one more?" He honest to Gods fluttered his eyelashes. Zolf rolled his eyes and tugged on his arm to bring Oscar's ear down to his level.

"Right, that's enough. It's done." He said quietly, taking the sheaf of papers that Oscar had concealed inside his diary out of his hands. "You've done enough, I love you and I loved every second of it, and now it's time to go." 

Oscar, startled out of his self-righteous trance, moved to exit the stage at the gentle but insistent tug on his arm. Zolf looked at the papers in his hand, the rest of Oscar's list of crimes committed by people in this room. As they reached the wings he made a short detour to the front of the stage. 

"There you go." He said. And offering them his broadest wink he pitched them as hard as he could into the audience. The last sight he had before they disappeared behind the curtain was the genteel folk of London descending on them like a pack of dogs.

* * *

The news reports, read a day later in an Irish coastal café while Cel pottered about in James Barnes' boat, were fairly unanimous in describing what eventually occurred as a riot. Oscar did some tutting of his own at that, complaining loudly to anyone who would listen about the loss of subtlety and semantic aptitude among journalists, and how it would be far more poetic to describe it as a fracas. Zolf in his turn grumpily pointed out that ‘we caused a riot' sounded a lot better than ‘we caused a a fracas', and also that they had a house to take possession of and if Wilde didn't hurry up and drink his coffee they would be late to pick up the keys. Barnes watched it all with the detached amusement of an old campaigner, until the tutting and excited sounds coming from his boat became a puff of smoke and a particularly ecstatic whoop. He hurried out.

"So, are you pleased with yourself?" Zolf asked as he lovingly harassed Oscar into his coat and out of the café door.

"When am I not?" Oscar asked. 

"Good point. And you made the papers again."

"Ah, but this time none of the critics will be in a position to give their opinion." Oscar gave him a sharp-toothed grin.

“‘Spose not." Zolf tucked his arm comfortably into Oscar's elbow. It was partly affection, partly a subtle way to speed up their pace. "Are we on to our next big adventure then?" Oscar made a face.

“I do hope not."

"Yeah, you're right." Zolf agreed, steering them down the high street to the office where the keys for their new house should be waiting for them. "Here's to the quiet life." 

"For now." Oscar agreed, smiling down at him.

"Yeah, for now.”


End file.
